Rodrigo y Gabriela

Simone and I are fortunate enough to see a lot of great concerts, but perhaps the best one we've seen was Rodrigo y Gabriela last November at the Ancienne Belgique in Brussels. If you're not familiar with rodgab, they are former thrash rockers who bored of that scene in Mexico, moved to Ireland, and starting using their guitars as percussion instruments.

If you want Simone to arrive early for something . . . tell her it is a general admission concert. She won't be late. To give you an idea of how close we were, that's Simone clapping on the left of the picture below . . .

Here are a few pics . . .

And one with Rodrigo using a bottle of Heineken as a guitar slide . . . it would have sounded better had he used Orval.

Here's a short video of each of them playing solos . . . not great quality, but you get the idea of a) how close we were and b) how they use their guitars for percussion . . . especially in the Gabriela clip.

Dublin

My work took me to Dublin last week for a conference, yes - during St. Paddy's Day, but because of the conference my free time was limited and I wasn't able to make it out for the parade; however, I did get to see some revelry in the streets of Dublin in the early evening hours of St. Paddy's Day.  This picture is in the Temple Bar . . .

I was also able to get to Johnnie Fox's Famous Pub after having missed it when Simone and I were in Ireland in 2008. If you ever find yourself in Dublin, then make time one evening to trek up the Dublin Mountains to Johnnie Fox's . . .

Amazing food and music . . .

And of course some Irish humor . . .

Here's a short clip of dance and music at the pub . . .

Mad Cookery

So cookery is really a British term and one that I actually kind of hate (Troy and I have a running list of Annoying Things British People Say, but that is another story for another day). However, I recently read My Life in France, Julia Child's biography, and in it she constantly referred to the process of writing Mastering the Art of French Cooking as "cookery-bookery", which I thought was cute. So I suppose the term can be used for good as well as evil.

Anyway. I have been cooking a ton of colorful, fun dishes in the last few weeks, and my process is a bit like mad science. I really enjoy playing with contrasts--colors, flavors, scents, textures--and my favorites usually end up capturing some of each. Like this first one, a pear-apple chutney. I looked at a couple of different recipes for inspiration, but ultimately ended up just throwing in a bunch of stuff. It was de-li-cious and very versatile--served as an accompaniment to grilled chicken, combined with curry-cream cheese to make Indian-esque finger sandwiches, and even a stand alone with crackers. It started out like this:



And after bubbling away on the stove for the best part of an hour, ended up like this:



While we appreciate a good ol' fashioned hamburger as much as the next guy (Troy makes a seriously good burger) we don't typically eat a lot of red meat--for both health and environmental reasons. Every once in a while, though, red meat does creep into my cooking, and the colors in this szechuan beef stir-fry were just begging for a photograph!



It may sound hoaky or cliché, but we think that a lot of Asian food tastes better when eaten with chopsticks. Plus, we just like eating with chopsticks, and we happen to have some really pretty ones that we bought in Hong Kong.

See? Pretty, huh?





I do cook a lot these days, but I rarely fuss with the presentation and especially not on a weeknight with just Troy and I. That being said, on a recent Wednesday evening I made a fabulous tabbouleh with chicken and feta and decided to serve it on a bed of lettuces as one of my recipes suggested (I have a habit of looking at 2 or 3 and sort of combining them plus adding some dashes of my own). It turned out so pretty and entailed practically no extra effort.



It frequently happens that Troy comes into the kitchen to find that just about every pot, pan, bowl, and spoon is piled up in the sink and the surrounding counter and all that just to make a salad! (Kidding. Sort of.) I must say that he is usually a very good sport about it. He has also often been forced to wait an extra 10...20...60 minutes for a meal. (It turns out that I am an equally poor estimator of time in the kitchen as I am in other parts of my life, surprising huh?) "When will that be done?" "I don't know, 20 minutes?" It's almost never 20 minutes. However, every once in a while I pull off something brilliant using only one pot and ready in 15 minutes flat. The other night was just such a triumph--farfalle in pesto with chicken, artichoke hearts, and both sun-dried and fresh tomatoes. Molto, molto bene.



Dessert is not really one of my specialties, but every once in a while I venture out, like with this Coffee Coffee Cake (coffee cake with coffee in it). I include the photo not so much for the taste of the cake itself--it did taste really good, though the amount of sweetener (regular sugar, brown sugar, and honey) in it was truly horrifying--but rather it's mostly for my mom. My mom is a great cook and I credit her with laying the foundation for both my palate and interest in cooking. When we were kids, she always tried to make us eat a "balanced, colorful" diet, introduced interesting ingredients, and never made us a separate meal, but instead pretty much always had us eat what the adults were eating. Her one achilles heel, though, is the cake. She is the Queen of the Tilty Cake. She always wants to make layer cakes for our birthdays, and she spends whole days in the kitchen trying to make a cake that will just stand up straight and look...cake like. Frequently, however, her yummy cakes end up like the Leaning Tower and she has to prop them up using all manner of tricks. As it happens, I used a fluted silicone mold for my cake, so there was really no way for it to tilt, but once I constructed this elaborate support system for the saran wrap to protect the sticky topping during transit, it reminded me both of a circus tent and also of many of my mother's propped up cakes. Smile.

Ggantija Hops!

To celebrate our visit to the Oldest Free-Standing Building in the World, Ggantija, Simone busted out some mad hops worthy of the occasion and in the process gave me the opportunity of capturing perhaps my favorite picture of all time.

Malta Pt. 2 - Gozo!

My dad asked me if we saw any falcons during our trip to Malta. Though the Knights of St. John once paid two per year as "rent" for the Maltese islands, sadly the poor birds have since been hunted nearly to extinction. So, no falcon-sitings for us. What we did see, however, were cart ruts. And what are those? We'll get to that.

Malta actually consists of three islands--Malta, Gozo, and Comino. Malta is the biggest and best known of the trio, while tiny Comino is basically an uninhabited rock with a beach. Gozo, located just a few miles off Malta's northwest coast, is about 1/3 Malta's size, is more rural and pastoral-feeling, and, as it was spared the bombing that damaged much of Malta during WWII, is much prettier. Though our time in Malta was limited, we decided to spend a whole day (Valentine's Day, as it happens) on Gozo.



We took this shot while waiting for the car ferry to unload before we drove on. Going over, this was a quick, easy process. Coming home, however, not so much. Apparently the big Carnival party for that day was on Gozo, and the entire country had come across to partake in the festivities. So, that night it took the better part of three hours to get back to Valetta. Blerg.


Entering Mgarr Harbor


Mgarr, one of the Knights' fortified cities


Grapes Wine Bar

Finally, on Gozo, we found something of a café culture! Piazzas and umbrella-shaded cafés are, to us, inseparable from our notion of Italy. Being such close neighbors, Italy has heavily influenced Malta and thus we expected to see a similar "life in the streets" layout to the cities, but it was not that prevalent on Malta island. Gozo, however, felt more social, more communal, and somehow more Mediterranean. This little enoteca had heat lamps under the umbrellas, which made sitting outside feel great!


Basilica of St. George

Our little café, located on Pjazza San Gorg, was in the shadow of the beautiful Basilica of St. George. St. John's Cathedral in Valetta was the first church in Malta built with a double spire, but nearly every church built after it features this motif.


Il-Kastell

Victoria (fka Rabat, but renamed after Britain's Queen Victoria for her Diamond Jubilee) is the main town on Gozo, and the highest point of the city is dominated by Il-Kastell, the old citadel. The wind was blowing something fierce, which made walking around a bit of an effort. But it also created such a clear day that we captured some pretty spectacular pictures.


Troy with Victoria behind


Me with the Gozitan plain behind


Looking towards Xewkija and its massive Rotunda

The sky was so beautiful, and since we were visiting in winter, everything was so green.



Tucked into a hillside, sort of in a suburban area, lies the rather unprepossessing entrance to the Ggantija Temple Complex. I don't know if you can make out the inscription, but it says that this is a UNESCO World Heritage site, used from c. 3600 - 2500 B.C. Elsewhere on the site, it terms this the Oldest Building in the World! There are two joined temples at Ggantija, and they are considered among the oldest and largest in the Maltese Islands. As a point of reference, keep in mind that these temples are ~500 years older than the oldest pyramid in Egypt.

The guidebook said that visiting these temple sites can be frustrating because they often leave you with more questions than answers, and this was true for us. Who were these people? How did they create not just buildings, but such complex architecture? How did they move and lift the stones? How did they learn about astronomy? What was their cosmology?


Megalithic stones at the Ggantija Temples


Inside one temple; thought to be an altar(s)


These walls are 6+ meters (~20 feet) high!

After all that philosophy at Ggantija, we needed a dose of tranquil nature. So we headed off for Gozo's west coast to check out the sea cliffs at Dwejra and the "Azure Window", a natural aperture in the rocks.


Sea cliffs at Dwerja


The Azure Window

From Dwerja, we drove a south-easterly route towards Ta'Cenc in search of... the cart ruts. Cart ruts are maybe the biggest mystery among all the mysterious ancient stuff in Malta. These "ruts" are man-made parallel grooves in the ground, and they date back to seriously old prehistoric times, something on the order of 7000 years ago(!). Archaeologists speculate that the ancient Maltese used a travois-style sled to transport stuff and thus these ruts were created by the continuous movement of these carts or sleds being pulled over the (relatively) soft limestone. But, who knows? Because they are so old and the geology and sea depths of Malta keep evolving, now some of these ancient tracks actually go off cliffs, appear underwater, and reappear across a bay or chasm. We just had to see this.



However, after wandering around fruitlessly, guided by some pretty vague directions ('Wander off to the left of the track, near the edge of the limestone crag...keep your eyes peeled'), we were ready to give up. It was cold, we were getting blown around (which you can see in the super glamorous photo above), and we had a ferry to catch. But, just as we were ready to throw in the towel, a hardy local out walking his dog on the cliffside path happened by. We stopped him and asked about the ruts, and he sort of waved over our heads, pointing off across the fields we had just skirted. Hardly clear directions, but we figured we'd try walking back that way if we could stand the wind and the rough ground for a few more minutes. Troy wandered ahead and after a few minutes called out the magic word: Ruts!


Prehistoric cart ruts

Triumph! We still don't know how we found them, but we did and they were amazing...



Gozo Photo Album - Click Here